Seychelles: home from home

There wasn’t much out there for the Seychelles. The caretaker of the block of flats I live in had very kindly got on the case and found an interview with school counsellor and poet Stephanie Joubert, in which she describes Seychellois poetry as ‘still taking baby steps’, but in terms of prose stories I was at a loss for a long time.

Tom Slone at Masalai Press had mentioned a writer called Glynn Burridge in one of his emails. However, as he said that Burridge was English, I had discounted his work. It wasn’t until, in the absence of any other leads, I decided to contact Burridge that I realised his work might fit the bill.

As well as being a UK national, Burridge, who grew up in pre-revolutionary Iran, has Seychellois citizenship and has lived in the archipelago for more than 30 years, having spent two decades overseeing the creation of an estate for the exiled Iranian royal family on the barely inhabited D’Arros Island. His collection of short stories, Voices, draws on tales he heard and experienced during this time in the country that has become his home. If I was reading Guillermo Yuscarán for Honduras, then surely Burridge should count for the Seychelles.

Few short story collections can be more eclectic than this one. Comprising historical essays on the region, eerie tales of apparitions and ghostly legends, personal descriptions of the challenges of setting up home on an untouched island, stirring accounts of battles between man and nature on the high seas, and a novella based on an act of piracy in the time of Queen Victoria, Voices presents a nation of many characters to the reader.

At the heart of the book, is a strong sense of the Seychelles being a country of immigrants. Burridge sets this up from the first page, with his ‘Historical Sketch of the Amirantes Islands’ (the group of islands within which D’Arros sits) outlining the many visitors that have come to the islands from Asia, Europe and elsewhere over the centuries. In this country that has always been ‘welcoming to exiles’, the act of arriving and putting down roots seems, according to the author at least, to be almost part of the national culture.

Burridge combines this sense of the diversity of the influences on Seychellois society with a passionate and in-depth knowledge of island life. From the specifics of handling different sailing crafts to the crash course he had to take to enable him to become D’Arros’s only doctor and dentist, a sense of the writer working his way into the fabric of the nation through painstaking, practical experience comes through strongly. In addition, we get a powerful impression of Burridge’s love for the place, both in his intimate knowledge of it and in the descriptions of the natural world that break into the text like the sun through clouds, flooding the narrative with beauty.

Burridge’s writing is at its best when it comes to describing tense and difficult situations, usually involving the ocean. The story ‘Leviathan’, in which a group of amateur fishermen face being towed down to their deaths by a monstrously large shark, for example, is gripping, as are ‘Desnoeufs’ and ‘The Expedition’, which deal with similar scenarios. Underlying these stories and many others in the book is a sense of the fragility and perilousness of life in this isolated place, surrounded by the great, mysterious ocean. As Anna asks in ‘Leviathan’: ‘Do we possess an inventory of what’s out here in these empty places?’

There is also some lovely humour in the book. I particularly enjoyed Burridge’s account of his attempt to call his father by radio-telephone only to receive an earful of abuse – ‘all he heard, as he told me later, through a blizzard of electronic noise, was a sound he described as the universe farting, accompanied by a demonic, ear-shattering whistle, at once painful to the ear and strangely mocking in its tone’. ‘Gris-Gris’, in which a naive English hotel manager finds himself baffled by the superstitions of his staff, is great too.

Inevitably for so diverse a collection, the writing style is somewhat inconsistent. While mostly enjoyable, it occasionally verges on the florid, while the historical pieces can be a little dry and dutiful in tone. There are also some alarming jumps in perspective between the characters that leave the reader scrabbling to catch up. In addition, the mix of genres and subject matter, though often refreshing, can be baffling at times. I wasn’t convinced by the inclusion of the novella Sea Dogs, which sprawled oddly amid these otherwise short, pithy pieces.

As a whole, though, the collection makes for a good read. The insight into nation-building on a microcosmic scale on D’Arros Island is fascinating and there are moments where readers will find themselves laughing out loud, as well as gripping the book for fear of what might happen beyond the next page turn. If this is a preliminary sounding of the depth and breadth of stories the Seychelles has to offer, it’s high time we had some more.

Thanks. Yes, I know what you mean. But in fact the Seychelles has three official languages: French, English and Creole. A lot of different ways of speaking for so small a place! Thanks very much for your comment

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About Me

I'm Ann Morgan, a freelance writer and editor from London. My first book, 'Reading the World' or 'The World Between Two Covers', as it's known in the US, was published in 2015. It was inspired by my year-long journey through a book from every country in the world, which I recorded on this blog. My next book, a novel called 'Beside Myself', is published worldwide in English by Bloomsbury.

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About me

I'm a freelance writer and editor from London. My first book, 'Reading the World' or 'The World Between Two Covers', as it is known in the US, was published in 2015. It was inspired by my year-long journey through a book from every country in the world, which I recorded on this blog. My next book, a novel called 'Beside Myself', will be published worldwide in English by Bloomsbury in 2016. When I'm not reading, writing, blogging or hanging around online, I can often be found singing in professional choirs.